February 01, 2010

Unsupported Audio Signal. Please Check Your Device Output.

I have a nice home entertainment center. Nearly everyone who watches a movie at my house comments that they really like it. Recently, I added a Nintendo Wii to my entertainment center. Soon, I started to receive an error message on the HDTV saying “Unsupported audio signal. Please check your device output.“

As a tech, I made the logical assumption that the error message had to do with the Wii. So, I started to look at the Wii connections and settings. Unfortunately, nothing I did eliminated the error message. It still flashed on my screen every once in a while for about 10 seconds.

I realized a couple of things as I continued to troubleshoot the problem. First, the error message only appeared when displaying output from the computer connected to the HDTV, not from the cable box. Also, the error message didn’t tell me which component was generating the message. Was it the computer, the receiver, or the HDTV?

An Internet search helped me learn that the error message is common to several Sony HDTVs. But, there seemed to be a general confusion as to what the error message means. In my view, Sony TVs do little to tell you that they are the source of the error message, nor what input channel is causing the error. I had to spend a lot of time troubleshooting this error message in order to resolve it. If Sony simply told me that it was a Sony generated error and which channel was faulty, I would have been much better off and able to fix the issue much more quickly. This unfortunately, was not the case.

This is the original error message:

"Unsupported audio signal. Please check your device output."

This is my suggestion for an improved error message:

"The Sony HDTV is having an audio input problem on HDMI 3."

I did solve the mystery after a couple of days of on and off troubleshooting. My computer is connected to the Sony HDTV via HDMI. HDMI has the ability to carry both video and audio. Often a computer is connected to a HDTV via HDMI, but the sound is routed to the receiver for sound processing. In my case, I use an optical connection from the computer to the receiver for sound processing. I've had my home entertainment center setup and working without errors for close to a year. Why it started to report an error now is beyond me. My fix was to use a DVI to HDMI adapter and connect the HDMI cable to the DVI port on the computer. The screen resolution was unaffected and the error message vanished as the DVI port does not transmit sound as an HDMI port does.

I love my Sony HDTV. I only wish that Sony did a better job reporting errors.

If this post was helpful to you, please click on Comments below and leave a comment.

THANKS VERY MUCH!!! I have been dealing with issue for months now. I just tried to do some screen shots of the error message... I was stymied by the fact that screen shot would not capture the message in the picture! I have a Sony HDTV that doubles as my monitor and I never would have figured this were it not for your insights. Thanks a million!!!